Every youth pastor knows the importance of relationships.
You won’t see a young person’s life radically changed just by listening to the best sermons. For every solid teen in a youth group, somehow, somewhere, there are committed believers pouring their guts out for that student. For the solid teens that come from Christian homes, that’s often the parents.
But what about the families that aren’t led by parents that love the Lord and disciple their kids?
I believe that family is one of the biggest “gaps” that we as youth ministers are called to fill. …

88% of children raised in Christian families leave church at the age of 18, never to return. 64% of decisions for Christ are made before the age of 18, and 77% are made before the age of 21. We can’t sit back and watch this generation be stolen out of our own churches and homes. By God’s grace, we must take action, and we must do it now.

Apparently there’s a “greater” debate out there between whether today’s teens are the smartest or the dumbest generation America has ever seen.
I’m not going to lie: There are a lot of things to worry about. To put it plainly, this is the most ADD generation we’ve probably ever seen. Attention spans range from 3-5 seconds, and if they’re not entertained, they’ll leave you in an instant.
How should that affect our youth group meetings? Many times we scramble to keep teens’ attention and draw them into the message or Bible lesson …

Today I received an interesting email from Stan who is a fellow youth leader. The interesting part is that it’s an Ethiopian Church. It’s really cool check it out: http://www.eecdenver.org/ Stan needs some youth ministry suggestions and ideas.
Here is his email to me and I would like for you to leave your response by commenting:
Steve,
Ran across your blog while gong over next year plans for my youth group.  Thought maybe you had some thoughts on a challenge I am faced with.
Some Background.  I am in Aurora CO (we attended Invincible …

I saw this intriguing title on Yahoo today: Cold Cash For Good Grades. The program is actually called: Green for Grade$ – they are paying students that get good enough grades.
Yep – $50 for an A, $35 for a B, and $20 for a C
Here’s the video:

It made me think – Are there youth ministries that are paying students to do certain things like: attendance, bringing a friend, each time you share the gospel, etc..? And if so what kind of results would there be? Would the students get the …

I recently asked the Jr. High students that I lead to come up with questions that they currently have about God, the Bible, Christianity and wow, I couldn’t have been happier by the quality and thought provoking questions that I got back. Above is the actual questions that I received back on strips of paper that we handed out.
This brings me to asking a question, “Are you creating an environment where questions can be asked?”
If your answer is YES – Great! Please share for the sake of us youth leaders what you …

Transitioning off of Level One and Level Two, we come to a level in youth ministry called, “Community”.
If you have seen The Lord of The Rings movie series this what we call “The Shire” effect. The Shire effect? Yeah, in a perfect youth ministry fantasy world, this would be where every student’s spiritual needs are being met, you see the sincere smiling faces of students that really love each other and their leaders. All students (even the Jr. High) obey the rules of each game. You only have to share …